Daily Reflections
When I was a child, my family lived in an old ancestral house that my great-grandfather purchased nearly a century ago when he married my great-grandmother. It was a traditional Filipino stone house, a stone-walled ground floor, and a wooden second floor, complete with large windows that allowed the cool…
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Dear Readers, As we Catholics continue to celebrate the Christmas season, many other people have taken down the Christmas trees. They have carefully put away the decorations until next year. The stores are putting out Valentine’s Day decorations. Christmas is already a memory. I find myself whispering, “Father, forgive them.…
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Fra Angelico, The Nativity[1] At the end of this calendar year, we transitioned from one liturgical cycle to a new one: we went from cycle B to cycle C, and thus, we began Advent. From the “sweet-penance-transitional-time” of Advent, we moved into Christmas: we went from penance and expectation to…
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The Church today remembers the children Herod killed in an attempt to kill Jesus. This is such a difficult feast to understand, but it is important to remember that the Church declares that all these children are martyrs and saints in Heaven. Our Lord can turn the most wicked of…
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Two days ago, we celebrated the birth of Christ. Today, being the feast of St. John, the Gospel presents us with the episode of the empty tomb, which is one of the many evidences, confirming the resurrection of Christ. The Liturgy of the Christmas season thus encourages us to follow…
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Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, surrounded by family and loved ones, as we celebrated the birth of Jesus. As I was reflecting on my article last week, I was struck by the recent tragedies affecting several families, and if you are still surrounded by your…
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One of the greatest songs of Advent, which tells all about Christmas is the song: “O come o come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear.” The wordings of the song go back to a Latin form in the medieval…
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On this last day of Advent, the eve of Christ’s birth, my prayer is a prayer of hope. With the birth of a baby there is so much to hope for. It is an event that inspires love, joy, and life. Hope is the fruit of this. This Jubilee Year…
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My dear friends, we hardly get good news these days. When we turn on our television or visit any of our social media platforms, it is almost the same. The media are commercialized. It is more of business and commercial news, adverts, negative influences and influencers, online abuses, criticisms, attacks,…
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Today I reflect on the second reading from Hebrews and the invitation the Lord presents to us. Our Lord came as the ultimate sacrifice. He came as a blameless, spotless victim who offered his life out of love and for our salvation. From the very moment God breathed his breath…
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